Editor’s Note: Developed by a consortium of companies ranging from FPGA vendors to end users, the FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC) is an ANSI standard that provides a standard mezzanine card form factor, connectors, and modular interface to an FPGA located on a base board. Decoupling the I/O interfaces from the FPGA simplifies I/O interface module design while maximizing carrier card reuse.

The Xilinx Targeted Design Platform strategy is to supply the infrastructure to enable designers to innovate and achieve product differentiation.

“Xilinx’s 7 series families take FPGA technology further into SoC applications that were never possible before without costly and time-consuming ASIC or ASSP development,” said Vin Ratford, Senior Vice President, World Wide Marketing, Xilinx. “Xilinx is executing a record-breaking rollout of its 28nm generation, which means customers now have access to base and domain platforms as well as a range of ecosystem offerings for evaluating, developing and deploying systems that take advantage of the low-power and flexibility 7 series FPGAs bring to the table.”

Editor’s Note:Actually, the speed of the Xilinx 28nm rollout really is rather impressive. If we peer back in time to the 90 nm node, it took several years to fully rollout two FPGA families. At the 65 nm node it took several years to fully roll out just one family. Things got a little faster with two families at the 45/4n nm node. But Xilinx are really on a roll with four families at the 28 nm node.

Since the first Kintex-7 devices were shipped to customers in March 2011, Xilinx has commenced the roll out of its Kintex-325T, Virtex-485T, Virtex-2000T FPGAs, and Zynq-7020 Extensible Processing Platform. The three new kits are the first among nearly 40 to be delivered by Xilinx and/or ecosystem members supporting embedded and high-speed connectivity applications, as well as markets such as automotive, broadcast, consumer, industrial and communications. Reference designs that come with each kit give both new and experienced FPGA users ideal starting points for getting designs completed quickly while achieving the best performance, lowest power, highest bandwidth and most feature-rich utilization of Xilinx FPGAs.

Ecosystem support and open standardsThe 100’s of board, design service, IP, and tool vendors who make up the Xilinx Alliance Program provide the rich diversity of development solutions and applications that enable Xilinx Targeted Design Platforms. Xilinx worked closely with 4DSP Inc., Analog Devices Inc., Avnet Electronics Marketing, Northwest Logic, The MathWorks, Texas Instruments, and Xylon to bring the first Kintex-7 FPGA and Virtex-7 FPGA development kits to market with more support from the ecosystem to follow.

Xilinx’s adoption and support for open standards throughout the design and development flow further strengthens the ability of the Xilinx Alliance Program to efficiently and cost effectively deliver key technologies that in turn make it easier for FPGA users to complete their projects.

Each development kit supports the FMC specification, a key Targeted Design Platform enabler defined by VITA 57 that delivers an industry standard daughter card form factor, connector and modular interface to an FPGA located on a base board. Whether the cards are custom made or commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) from the Xilinx ecosystem, developers can leverage 100’s of existing FMCs immediately, or reuse their investments in cards targeting previous generation Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 devices.

In addition to the open standards supported at the board level, Xilinx’s adoption of the AMBA AXI4 (Advanced eXtensible Interface 4) standard enables plug-and-play use and reuse of Intellectual Property (IP) cores to further accelerate productivity. Using the PlanAhead design planner available in the ISE Design Suite, developers have a unified design process for logic, DSP and embedded processing that simplifies the IP assembly process and promotes team design with hierarchical flows within the FPGA.

About the New Kits The Kintex-7 FPGA KC705 Evaluation Kit provides a flexible framework for designing higher-level systems using DDR3, Gigabit Ethernet, PCI Express, and other serial connectivity standards. An AMS header lets designers explore the AMS technology and see how the feature can trim BOM cost. Other communications features—high-speed GTX transceivers, SFP+, and SMA connectors—further extend the list of advanced capabilities that can be evaluated and leveraged from this platform. ($1,695 order entry open now)

The Kintex-7 FPGA KC705 Evaluation Kit

The Kintex-7 FPGA DSP Kit co-developed with Avnet Electronics Marketing features the Kintex-7 FPGA KC705 board and includes an integrated high-speed analog FMC to interface to real-world signals. Featuring dual-channel 800 MSPS 16-bit digital-to-analog converters (DACs) and dual-channel 250 MSPS 14-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), the high-speed analog module delivers exceptional throughput when combined with the massively parallel processing bandwidth of the DSP48E1 arithmetic processing engines in the Kintex-7 FPGA. Data paths to and from the DSP slices can be created and integrated into systems using industry-standard AXI4 interface conventions. ($3,995 order entry now from Avnet)

The Kintex-7 FPGA DSP Kit from Avnet

The Virtex-7 FPGA VC707 Evaluation Kit gives designers an easy starting point for evaluating and leveraging devices that deliver breakthrough performance, capacity and power efficiency. The kit is the optimal choice for advanced systems that need the highest performance and highest bandwidth connectivity. The kit speeds the development of designs that can leverage the full breadth of Virtex-7 FPGAs, all of which offer maximum power efficiency—requiring 50 percent less power than previous generation devices. ($3,495 with order entry open late-February 2012)

The Virtex-7 FPGA VC707 Evaluation Kit

Members of the Xilinx Ecosystem speak out...Collaboration with the Xilinx ecosystem provides the rich diversity of solutions and applications that Xilinx Targeted Design Platforms offer. Here’s what vendors who collaborated on the first three kits announced today have to say:

Northwest Logic, Inc., - Premier Xilinx Alliance Program Member“Northwest Logic’s mission to deliver high-quality IP cores that are both high-performance and easy to use, is very much in line with Xilinx’s Targeted Design Platform approach for building systems with FPGAs. Our PCI Express solutions supporting Xilinx development kits are designed specifically to enable designers to very quickly get to the heart of their design using the connectivity-based design kit, right out of the box. We have been providing our PCI Express based- solution for Xilinx Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 FPGA connectivity kits and it is a privilege to continue to provide it for the 7 series.” Brian Daellenbach, President, Northwest Logic Inc.

Xylon d.o.o - Premier Xilinx Alliance Program Member“As a Xilinx Premier Alliance Member, we’ve worked very closely with Xilinx to provide best-in-class video, graphics, and controller IP cores, as well as software and platforms to the market. We’re of course excited to have our SD Host Controller IP (logiSDHC) and Display Controller IP (logiCVC) cores be part of the embedded reference design for the 7 series Targeted Design Platforms. In addition to the power and cost advantages that the 7 series FPGA silicon brings to customers, we’ve followed Xilinx’s lead on IP-based design by embracing the AMBA AXI4 interconnect standard to provide an easy plug-and-play experience for our IP along with comprehensive software stacks for Embedded Linux and standalone applications.”Davor Kovacec, CEO, Xylon d.o.o.

Avnet Electronics Marketing - Certified Xilinx Alliance Program Member, Global Distributor“Avnet and Xilinx have worked together for many years to provide design kits and development tool training for FPGA designers, helping to make the development flow easier and the design cycle shorter. The Kintex-7 FPGA DSP Development Kit is another excellent example of our two companies working together to provide design teams with the resources they need to get started quickly, innovate their application and be successful in delivering their product.”Jim Beneke, Vice President, Global Technical Marketing, Avnet Electronics Marketing

The MathWorks – Xilinx Alliance Program Member“Using Xilinx Targeted Design Platforms and Model-Based Design with Simulink, FPGA engineers can achieve faster development cycles and create highly optimized DSP designs. MathWorks has worked closely with the Xilinx team to offer new capabilities in the Kintex-7 DSP Development Kit, such as real-time analog data acquisition into Simulink from the high-speed analog interface. As long-time, strategic collaborators, MathWorks and Xilinx will continue to work together to deepen the synergy between our complementary RTL code generation environments, Simulink HDL Coder and System Generator, to provide greater design abstraction, an integrated workflow, and superior quality of results.”Jim Tung, Fellow, MathWorks

4DSP LLC. - Xilinx Alliance Program Member“FPGA Mezzanine Cards (FMC) from 4DSP LLC were originally developed to be used in combination with Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 FPGA devices. The FMC150, with high speed A/D and D/A channels, is also compatible with the new Xilinx generation of 7 Series development kits and is included in the Kintex-7 FPGA DSP kit. A fully featured reference design, provided with this kit, helps designers speed up their development process by leveraging proven hardware and IP.”Pierrick Vulliez, CTO, 4DSP LLC.

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